Dr. Ward is Boston Children’s Hospital’s inaugural chief equity and inclusion officer, as well as the founding director of the organization’s office of health equity and inclusion and co-chair of the equity, diversity and inclusion council. She has developed a health equity education series to train the staff on cultural awareness and implicit bias. In addition, she is creating a coaching and academic advancement program for early-career underrepresented faculty, launching pipeline programs to ensure a diverse workforce, offering confidential focus groups, designing the first comprehensive review of race-based clinical algorithms in pediatrics, and providing inclusive workshops to help team members handle microaggressions. Dr. Ward is also working with the National Pediatric Health Equity Collaborative and the Health Equity Leadership workgroup of the Children’s Hospital’s Solutions for Patient Safety in order to establish best practices for DEI in pediatric care.
